China’s Tencent, which has long been a quiet investor in Snapchat owner Snap, now owns more than a tenth of the messaging firm.
When Snap announced its quarterly results on Tuesday—with lower-than-expected revenues slashing 16% off its stock price—its regulatory filing also revealed Tencent’s surprisingly large stake.
“Our long-term shareholder Tencent Holdings Limited… has notified us that it has recently acquired 145,778,246 shares of our non-voting Class A common stock via open market purchases,” the filing read. As noted in the Financial Times, that makes for a stake in excess of 10%.
Altaba, formerly known as Yahoo, said last month that it had offloaded 4.6 million of its shares in Snap.
As Snap’s new filing also pointed out, Tencent (TCTZF) is also a competitor to Snap (SNAP). The Chinese firm is best known for its WeChat messaging app, although it has also build up a massive investment portfolio and is even building self-driving car technology. On Wednesday, Tencent’s e-book unit China Literature held an IPO that saw its shares quickly double in price.
Snap’s share price sank Tuesday because its quarterly revenues only amounted to $207.9 million, compared with the expected $236.9 million, and because it said it only had 178 million daily active users, versus the 181.8 million for which analysts were hoping.
The U.S. Firm also posted a net loss off $443.2 million, writing down $39.9 million from its overhyped “Spectacles” foray into the world of consumer hardware.
